beloved
by Ariesgirl666
Summary: For 488 days, Xander stays by Anya's grave, with only his grief and the empty words on her headstone for company. On the 489 day, Magnus Bane visits the grave of an old friend killed in the Battle of the Hellmouth.


**A/N: Okay, this was really sad for me to write, but I adore Anya and have been meaning to do a tribute to her for some time. I just finished the first six books of Mortal Instruments, and I was thinking about how both Magnus and Anyanka lived for such a long time and wondering if maybe they knew each other when she was a vengeance demon and that's how this came about.  
**

 **Post-Buffy, Pre-Mortal Instruments**

 **Completely disregarding the Buffy comics, because I don't like them.  
**

 **Enjoy!**

 **/**

 _ **ANYA CHRISTINA EMMANUELLA JENKINS**_

 ** _Beloved_ **

Numbly, Xander Harris traced his fingers along the engraving for the millionth time. His friends had given up trying to keep him away from the cemetery. They used to come every day too, but as time went on, they stopped. First Giles, then Buffy, and finally Willow.

 _"_ _Call me if you need anything,"_ Willow had implored. Xander hadn't even looked at her.

His fingers were chapped from the cold, and he let them fall from where they traced the _d_.

 _Beloved._ That was all they could say about her? About Anya, beautiful, incredible Anya? The woman that he loved?

Xander tried to remember her, happy and laughing, but all he could see was her on the day of their failed wedding, brown eyes huge and heartbroken, clearly aching for anything to hold onto.

Why did he do that? He had his reasons, didn't he? What were they?

 _Beloved_. He thought of Spike's death, and Tara's. Being _beloved_ by the Slayer or her friends seemed to be a curse. Like signing your own death warrant.

He saw her in his mind's eye, wishing he could say something different, that he could take it all back and marry her, that he could have just kept her out of the battle. _If she never met you, she'd still be alive,_ a voice at the back of his mind said, and Xander would have cried, would have broken down sobbing, curled up against Anya's grave like a small child, but he had run out of tears three hundred and eighty nine days ago.

 _Beloved_. It was funny how if you looked at the same word over and over again, it lost its meaning.

The sound of footsteps crunching against the fallen leaves caught Xander's attention, but he kept his attention dimly focused on Anya's grave, his vision blurring until there was only that slab of marble and nothing else in his world.

A hand came into Xander's vision, a hand adorned with rings, clutching a small bouquet of roses which were dropped at the foot of the gravestone.

He finally looked up to find the person attached to the hand.

He'd never seen the man before, wearing a long black coat, with green eyes and black hair gazing sadly at Anya's grave.

When Xander's voice finally came it was dry and cracked. How long had it been since he'd spoken. "You knew her?"

Startled, as if he'd only just noticed Xander, the man glanced at him. His eyes were slit-pupilled. Cat eyes. _Not human then_. But Xander hardly found himself caring what kind of demon the man was, or even if he had come to kill him.

"From a long time ago," the stranger said sadly.

"Her demon days?" Xander guessed. Not a single demon had come to visit Anya's grave. Not even D'Hoffryn.

Now there was thinly veiled surprise. "Her demon days," he agreed. "Anyanka and I were –close. How do –how did you know her?"

"She was the most important thing in my life," Xander rasped.

The stranger knelt then, running his fingers over Anya's grave briefly. "What happened to her?"  
"The Battle of the Hellmouth," Xander said. He felt hollow and empty, as if the wise-cracking, sarcastic Xander that he had been had died when they buried Anya.

He had gone down into the crater himself, digging with a shovel, and then with his hands, not letting Buffy pry him away until he finally found her body.

"She gave up her immortality?" the man asked. "For you?" His voice was incredulous.

"No," Xander said hollowly. He didn't want to talk about her, because what if once he started, he couldn't stop, until all of Anya, all of the memories that had been filling up left him and didn't come back and then that's all that he would be, a hollow shell of a man, living dead, crouched by a block of marble. "She lost it when she came to exact vengeance on me because of an ex-girlfriend."

Had it been Cordelia? Xander couldn't even remember.

"I guess it was my fault, though," he added.

 _One more thing to hate myself for._

"And still she loved you," the stranger said, his gaze distant.

"I –" Xander began, but choked on his words. "Yeah," he finally managed, feeling tears brimming for the first time in more than a year.

"I'm sorry," the stranger said, and the hollowness that lined his words was familiar to Xander.

The stranger turned to go and then, pausing as if thinking better of it, bent down to press something into Xander's hand.

"If you ever need my help," he said, a strange sort of urgency in his voice. "Give me a call. Anyone Anyanka cared about enough to…" his voice trailed off.

 _To die for,_ Xander thought. He didn't say anything.  
The man turned and left, and Xander waited until the sound of boots on leaves had faded before looking at the small glitter-dusted business card the man had given him.

 **MAGNUS BANE**

 **HIGH WARLOCK OF BROOKLYN**

As Xander turned back to look at Anya's grave, he wondered how much he really knew about her life.

The stories she would never get a chance to tell him now.

 _ **A/N: Okay, so please tell me what you think. I may leave this as a one-shot or I may expand it and go back in time to explore Magnus and Anya's history. Also, I'm sorry if anyone depicted here seems OOC. That's just how I picture Xander and Magnus grieving. I am completely emotionally exhausted from writing, this, so I hope you appreciated it.**_

 _ **Until next time!**_

 _ **-Ariesgirl666**_


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